


Dead of Winter

by Lucius Parhelion (Parhelion)



Category: Original Work
Genre: 1950s, M/M, Mild Horror, Southern California, Supernatural Elements, ghost story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-01
Updated: 2006-12-01
Packaged: 2018-12-02 14:10:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11511042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Parhelion/pseuds/Lucius%20Parhelion
Summary: Desperate to make it from graduate school to the hometown memorial service for his much-loved mentor Rich, Al takes a job debunking a haunted house. That was his first mistake. But at least he won't end up having to say goodbye to Rich.





	Dead of Winter

I

 

So Richard Wallace was dead, to start off with. No doubt about it: I'd received a telegram about him from one of the few pals I had left back in Bradlow. The notice of his death was in the _Bradlow Sentinel_ , too. A heart attack got him, and so much for all those healthy meals and runs along the lakeshore before he opened his antiques store every morning. Yeah, Rich was dead, all right, and I was hurting.

Of course, I didn't know yet that he'd be back.

That Friday morning in December, I was busy trying to come up with some way of getting to his memorial service. I'd already worked through sensible ideas like emptying out my puny savings, hocking my stuff, and borrowing money. Now I'd moved on to desperation, which was the reason for my current job interview. "You want me to stay in a haunted house?"

Mr. Krebs looked annoyed. "Fella, it's not haunted, it's reputed to be haunted. Kind of a difference there, yeah? Your job will be to stay at the place over the weekend and then write me a report about how the rumors are phony, so I can dump the place. I figure if there's no problem with the house, there's no problem for me in getting my commission."

I snorted. "If there wasn't some sort of problem with the house, you wouldn't be offering me thirty bucks for three night's work." At least, he wouldn't be offering me so much cash for easy work with my clothes on, but I didn't say so aloud. In 1952, thirty bucks was good money and implications of homosexuality were to be avoided at all costs.

Krebs shrugged. "You want the job?"

"I'm auditioning for a M.R. James story," I muttered. But if I was going to be walking away from my usual between-semesters job to get on a Greyhound— "Yeah, thanks. I'll need any newspaper clippings or background information your office has about the place. If you don't want me to see anything, I have to know what I'm not supposed to be seeing."

My logic stank, but he handed over a file folder and the keys without protest. I packed away my transcripts and track-and-field medals, stopped by his secretary to read and sign the contract, pocketed the envelope holding the first half of my fee, and walked out of his real estate office on Sunset Boulevard.

Startown Estate Agents had advertised for a mature, robust, and scientifically minded college student, and that's what they got. Now I was off to my apartment west of campus to sort through a file folder full of superstition and figure out what was going on. This so-called haunting had better not be some jerk trying to lowball the price on the house. I really wasn't in a mood for nonsense. Did I know anyone who could loan me a gun?

A sidewalk Santa interrupted my thoughts by jingling his handbell at me. I stared at him glumly.

"Ho, ho, ho," he announced.

"Ha, ha, ha," I said, as I dug out a dime for the charity pail. I had reason enough to mouth off even without my very own blues. Christmas in L.A. is half a joke: today might've been the nineteenth of December, but the streets were bright and smoggy. The hills were starting to green up from the torrential rains of the past few days.

Still, Santa was a hard case. "Merry Christmas, sonny!"

My eyes narrowed. No one could mistake me for a kid. When I was an undergraduate on an athletics scholarship, Coach had used me as a decathlete, and the looks had lingered. I was about to get blunt when I suddenly had a vision of Rich's amusement at my sparring with Santa Claus. So I changed my reply to, "Yeah, and a Sunny Solstice to you."

Santa looked confused. I gave him a big, bright, smile, and picked up the pace to catch my bus.

Back at my shack, my roomie Fred Ribera said, "Guy, you have mail."

"Great." I'd bet someone else had sent me the good news about Rich. "Do you know anyone with a gun?"

Fred glared, likely at what he thought I was implying about his old neighborhood, so I added, "Didn't two of your older brothers serve overseas?"

His expression cleared up. "Sure, but no chance Mama would let them keep that kind of souvenir around where her grandkids could find it." With his voice shifting toward sympathy, he said, "Speaking of souvenirs, your mail's a package."

"Yeah?"

"I got to it before the clowns upstairs did." He fished around on the floor beside the ancient couch we'd inherited from one of his aunts. "If those sons of whores don't stop boosting our deliveries..." With a triumphant grunt, he pulled the package out from beneath a collapsed heap of magazines and newspapers. "Here. I think it's something to do with your friend who died."

I took it. Sure enough, the return address was from Doug Glenny, our town's druggist and one of Rich's drinking buddies. "I'll just walk this into the bedroom."

"Okay, guy." He nodded at me tolerantly before wandering off into our microscopic kitchen where he could lean on the open door of the refrigerator while looking over its contents. I'm sure he thought I was worried about tearing up, not that he'd think tears were bad. Well, I might have a weakness for the waterworks right now, but I was more worried that there was something in that package to do with the unacceptable tastes Rich and I had shared.

My roomie was a good Joe, but he was also seriously engaged to be married. And considering what he and his fiancée, Mercedes, liked to get up to when no one else was supposed to be around, he was by no means a member of the club. So there was no sense taking chances.

I had my old suitcase open on my bed and half-packed. After shoving it out of the way and sitting down on the Pendleton blanket that served me as a bedspread, I pulled out my penknife, cut the string, and tore off the brown paper wrappings of my package. Inside was another layer of wrappings and a note.

_Dear Al:_

_Rich asked me to ship this to you if anything ever happened to him. There's another package coming, too, but it's larger so it might not get to you at the same time._

_Hope you can get back for the service on Tuesday the 23rd, but if you can't that's okay. I'll hoist one for you at the wake._

_Doug_

The note was like Doug: short, simple, and sweet. I put his note aside and went through the next layer of wrappings, which were also of brown paper but showing signs of age. Within those was a wooden box, maybe the length and width of the palm of my hand. Inside the box was an old-fashioned gold pocket watch, the big, round kind that you wind with a key and attach to your vest with a chain. More searching in the worn velvet lining turned up the key and a fancy watch ribbon – a fob, I thought it was called – but no note from Rich. I turned the watch over a few times and then pushed on its stem.

The case opened. On the inside, someone had engraved " _Neutiquam erro_. From VBN to RB," and someone else had added below "From RW to AR." I closed up the watch and reached for the fob to hook it onto the ring on the watch stem. Turned out, the fob felt funny. Looking closer, I realized that what I'd thought was a fancy ribbon was actually a woven strip of tiny braids with a big, gold seal dangling off one end. The fob had felt strange because the braids were made from fine, brown hair with a chestnut tinge, human hair the color of Rich's.

Rich had shown me this sort of thing in his shop: Victorian mourning jewelry, made from hair once belonging to the now departed. He'd loved the stuff with morbid glee.

"You are such a fruitcake," I said with deep appreciation. I corrected myself, "Were such," and cleared my throat. My fist closed around the watch, and I swallowed. After that, I had to take care of my own business for a while.

When I was done, I used an old T-shirt I'd scooped up from the floor to wipe my face. Then I finished attaching the fob, wound up the watch, and slid it into my trouser pocket. It had a nice tick that kept me company while I picked up the mess of brown paper wrappings. After shoveling them into the trash, I opened the file folder that the real estate guy had given me.

Fifteen minutes of quick skimming through newspaper clippings and real estate records answered one question for me. No wonder this house was supposed to be haunted. There'd been more blood spilled between those walls than between the covers of an EC horror comic.

***

For the most part, Southern California buildings haven't been around long enough to have what the rest of the country considers histories. But there are a few exceptions, and my temporary lodgings for the next three nights seemed to be one of them.

The house didn't start as anything special. It was just another cottage constructed back during the early 'teens in a neighborhood east of the Rose Bowl. But the owner and builder, Mr. Whiteside, had been a follower of one of those nutty religions that the Southland was known for even before the Hollywood types arrived. No one would have cared if he hadn't fed his wife and daughter a bottle of patent medicine loaded with opium one night in '19 before smothering them in their beds. He left them until a nosy mailman noticed something was wrong. They never did figure out what he did with his two sons. Anyhow, the local bigwigs kept the mess as quiet as they could, and Whiteside helped by hanging himself in his cell.

The house was rented for a while although the turnover in tenants was quick. Then, in '24, a socialite from the east coast bought the house, saying she wanted to be close to her great aunt's mansion on the Arroyo. Maybe, maybe not: once she'd gotten out from under the paternal thumb, her home life went wild. They found her dead two days after a loud party in '30. Her throat had been cut and her boyfriend, a second-string Latin lover from a third-rate studio, had disappeared along with all of her jewelry.

I wrinkled my brow over the clipping. I'd heard parts of this story before; it was one of those scandals writers dig up from time to time when trying to prove that Hollywood is the root of all evil. Lover-boy was allegedly going to be bounced from his contract because of the talkies and wanted the loot to furnish an early retirement. From time to time, stories still trickled in placing him somewhere in Mexico.

I went back to the real estate records. After the second – fifth? – murder, the house stayed empty during the early years of the Depression. Finally, in '32, a guy bought the house and lived in it until he died a natural death in '41. He'd been – I checked the copy of the obituary – sixty-seven years old when he keeled over, and there wasn't anything mysterious about the death. There hadn't been anything mysterious about his life, either, aside from couple of clips about tussles with the neighbors over pets and noise where the cops somehow got involved.

Renters came and went again all through the war years – around then, you could have subleased the snake pit at the zoo – until '45, when the house was sold one last time. About a year later, this latest owner was shot by a burglar and left to rot for a few days until the neighbors noticed the milk bottles piling up on the front porch.

After the shooting, no one would touch the place. There were close calls when the title almost passed, but something always went wrong. This past summer, for example, a rocket scientist from Cal Tech had gone so far as to put down a deposit and sign paperwork before he accidentally blew himself to kingdom come with some mercury fulminate in his home lab.

I put away the last newspaper clipping, closed the file folder, and sighed. Even though I was no sort of believer, this job didn't sound like fun. I'm not religious, but I know myself well enough to get that I am superstitious, especially when I'm not feeling up to snuff. Sure, nothing would happen tonight, but my background reading had been gruesome enough that I'd mistake every tiny noise of the house settling for the footsteps of Jack the Ripper making his Pasadena debut. I was looking at a long night. I'd better get some shut-eye while I could.

After setting my alarm clock, I emptied out my pockets onto the nightstand, stripped down to my skivvies, and slid between the sheets. Even though the afternoon sunlight was still sifting between my blinds, I didn't have much of a problem drifting off to sleep. These past couple of days had been more tiring than any days had a right to be. But the weary trend wasn't due to be broken just yet.

***

I was lounging back in a familiar wicker fan chair, the sort of antique chair Sidney Greenstreet occupied in adventure movies, while I watched Rich sort through half a trunk's worth of used books. Their leather bindings were dry to the point of cracking, and he handled them with care.

My voice, when I spoke, jumped and squeaked the way it did so often during those embarrassing months after my voice had broken. "Hey, why do you sell phony magic books, anyway? You don't believe in spooks. Neither do I."

"But that's precisely why I do sell them." I could see bits of gilt flaking off the spine of the book he was holding and clinging to his fingertips as he leafed through it, checking pages. " _Namenlose Kulte_ ," the letters that were left read. "If I believed in the occult, I wouldn't let this, for example, out of my sight. It would be like handing a bottle of nitroglycerine to the first customer who flourished a hundred-dollar bill."

He set the book to one side and gave me his full attention. Rich was long and lean enough that, when he cocked his head, he made me think of a heron checking for fish in Bradlow Lake. He had a beak of a nose, too. "You know I conduct a lot of my business by mail. Rare books sell well that way, especially if they're peculiar." He pursed his lips. "Since my being you-know-what makes it best that I don't sell curiosa..." Shaking his head, he picked up another book.

By curiosa, I knew he meant high-class smut. I also knew you-know-what referred to the subject I'd finally worked up the nerve to ask him about a few weeks ago. But I didn't want to talk about that right now. So I asked him instead, "If you don't believe in this stuff, how come you know so much about it?"

"Certainly, I don't believe. However, my close kin did. Also, when I was at—" he said, and then shut up. He never mentioned where or what he'd been before he came to Bradlow. Neither did I, although maybe not for the same reason. My folks both died in a fire when I was twelve, and I didn't want to remember having a normal life before becoming Odd Maud Reave's orphaned nephew. One reason I'd started hanging around Rich's store was that he didn't ask questions about the past, and he'd earned the same courtesy from me.

"Have you read any of these books?" I asked, almost at random, jerking a thumb at the heap.

"That I have. You can't recommend what you haven't studied. At least, you can't if you want to be honest." He gave me a pointed look, his hazel eyes sharp over his half-frame glasses. I already ran errands for him, and he was teaching me to watch the counter. "Many of these titles will have to wait until you're older, though." I perked right up. He smiled dryly. "I'm trusting in your honesty not to sneak previews." Then, with a sigh, he put the new book down and rubbed his chest, right where his tie was tucked under the edge of his vest. "I don't care how bohemian Maud is; there are some matters she wouldn't want you exploring until you're old enough to have a proper context. And this sort of nonsense is nothing that'll sneak up on you in the next year or two."

Unlike you-know-what. Which is why he'd talk to me about that subject, even though I already knew that he could've gotten in big trouble. "What if you're out and someone wants to buy one of these books, the ones in the locked case?"

"Refer them to me."

"But what if they want to talk to me?" 

"They shouldn't." He picked up the next book, put it down, and frowned. He loosened his tie. "Although they might. As I told you a fortnight back when we chewed over that other topic, some folks use talk about touchy matters as a way to get something from you, something you might not want to give to the first person with a good story."

"Yeah, but one of these days I might need to know this magic stuff." Even to my own ears, my voice was uncertain.

"Feel free to ask then."

"But what if you're not around?"

Rich looked at me, considering, rubbing his chest again. Then he kneaded the front of his neck with one large hand as he frowned, seeming to search for my answer. His breath was shortening to the point where he was almost panting.

That was when I realized what was happening. I tried to push myself up and out of the wicker chair, to reach out, to speak, but everything in the shop had frozen except for Rich. He went pale, pale as ashes, pale as death. His shoulders heaved back and then forwards, as if he wanted to vomit, just before he crumpled, collapsing onto the counter with a muffled crash. The old books were knocked in all directions as he slid down into a heap on the floor.

My legs were still. My hands were locked, half extended in a stupid, meaningless gesture. My lips were parted but I couldn't say a single word, not even goodbye.

I still couldn't talk when I woke up, staring into the dimness of my shuttered bedroom, my own heart pounding in my chest. But now I was mute because I had no air. It took two hard, deep breaths before I could start swearing and one more breath before I could reach out and turn off the alarm clock where it stood ringing on its pie pan.

After heaving off the sheets, I sat up, dropped my feet to the floor, and shook my head, hard. Bad dream. Nightmare. Reading the clippings for this job must've dredged up that half-remembered conversation and mixed in Rich's death. Now every imaginary detail had fused with my real past, breeding a nasty hybrid that could ambush me for years to come. I took another deep breath. This was one hell of a way to start my long watch.

 

II

 

I had to pull out the contents of my old suitcase and replace them with what I thought I'd need for two days and three nights in a haunted house, stuff like food, books, and a mostly empty bottle of scotch. My field knife went on top of the load along with a camp axe. After all, I'd struck out on the gun. I wound my new watch and tucked it into a trouser pocket, fob and all. Then I dug my bedroll out of the back of the closet, and was ready to go.

Fred caught me on the way out the door. "Where are you going?"

"I got the job," I said.

"Told you that you would," he said. "Gentlemen prefer blonds, but they hire brunets." He reached over to rumple the crew cut that he liked ragging me about. His own hair was slicked back the way Mercedes preferred it: nice, but not to my taste.

I ducked his hand and mock-simpered at him. "Oh, _you_." That was a dangerous parry for a guy of my sort, but I didn't feel like faking revulsion right then.

He ignored me. "So, what's the gig? Invading the beaches of Avalon?"

"Haunted house. I'm supposed to stay in the place until Monday to disprove the sale-quashing rumors. Up in Pasadena, over on Carlton Street, east of the Rose Bowl."

"Oh, hey? You want a ride? I was heading home for Friday dinner anyhow, to rack up some points with Mama before her Christmas campaign starts."

Fred's family lived just past South Pasadena, so I didn't argue. His offer would let me keep the money I'd otherwise shell out for bus fares. The trip would also give me time to tell him about the house's history and ask him to check with his friends and relatives if they'd ever heard anything about the place.

We took his old Ford up the Arroyo Seco Parkway, and he had me standing on the front porch of my new lodgings by sundown, along with my suitcase, my sleeping bag, the keys, and a strong sense of unease. I didn't like what the looks of this place hinted about the neighborhood attitudes. Even though the front yards on either side of the property were neat as pins, this yard was an arrangement of dead crabgrass, dead shrubs, and dead weeds. Even the dirt looked discouraged.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I'd lived in this kind of neighborhood. Usually, if a house was vacant and not cared for by the owner, somebody would sneak by and water or mow, just to keep the place from becoming a dump that reflected badly on the block. That hadn't happened here. But none of the windows were broken, either, and nobody had engraved their initials on the tapered columns of the porch, the normal fate of abandoned houses. There was no sodden paper on the porch that'd once been advertising flyers or free newspapers. The locals were completely avoiding this place, something I'd never seen happen with any of the so-called "haunted" houses we'd swapped stories about when I was a kid.

I unlocked the front door. The lock was stubborn but not past coaxing. Tomorrow, I'd have to try and talk to some of the neighbors about what had spooked them. But tonight, I needed to make camp. The streetlights were on, and it was time to make sure I was ready for... something.

That was when I realized I'd gotten so distracted by the true crime stories in Mr. Krebs' file folder that I hadn't spotted what was missing: a description of what made the place haunted rather than spooky. Great. If I'd thought my imagination could run wild before, I'd been wrong. Freed from facts, my nerves could twang out alarms based on every corny horror movie I'd ever seen.

The living room was dim. Grime on the windows cut twilight to a dingy glow. There weren't even rugs on the creaking, wood-planked floor. I put down my suitcase, went back and retrieved my bedroll, and unpacked my lantern – a Star Blue Lantern, the model with a wooden handle and a pivoting stand – before closing and locking the front door behind me. As I thought, closing the door not only muffled the neighborhood noises but also dropped the light level to where I needed my lantern's yellow beam.

I quickly checked the other rooms. The dining room was on the far side of a wide archway from the living room. Behind the dining room were a kitchen and a pantry to the right, and a corridor leading to three bedrooms and the bathroom to the left. The layout wasn't fancy, but the interior would have been good-looking in some other little house; all the corners and lintels were angled or smoothed in the fake Spanish style that was hot stuff when these houses were built. A lot of dark wood had gone into the windowsills and baseboards. Too bad all the work was wasted on phony spooks.

To my surprise, there were also draped objects shoved into the corners of the other rooms. I lifted up a few dusty sheets to see what was beneath: the furniture revealed was worn but not useless. After puzzling over a thirties Zenith console radio in the dining room, I decided these bits and pieces must have belonged to the old guy who died a natural death. They'd probably been left as a lure for the wartime tenants.

Continuing my check, I opened drawers and cabinet doors. Everything was empty. There weren't even mouse droppings. I peeked out the kitchen door, noting more dead vegetation in the small back yard. But I did get a surprise when I tried the taps in the kitchen sink. After a couple of metallic clangs and some spurts of rusty water, they delivered a clear and steady flow. I frowned. Sure, my life for the next couple of days was suddenly easier, but I was puzzled. Why was the water on? Not to take care of watering the yard, that was certain. Maybe to help in showing the house?

I decided to make camp in the dining room, since it was roughly at the center of the layout. Also, the bedrooms had enough of a history that I didn't want to give my imagination a boost from being inside any of those walls. Once my bedroll was untied and spread out, I went and used the toilet. As I washed my hands afterwards, I was glad to see the cloudy reflection in the mirror looked annoyed, not afraid.

For dinner, I had baked beans straight from the can, washed down with water. Then I took off my coat, arranged my suitcase and a blanket into some sort of backrest, and settled in to observe.

A whole lot of nothing happened, aside from the faint light from the side windows in the dining room slowly fading away. I got out the half-empty notebook I'd brought along and sketched a plan of the house's interior. Next, I noted down my first impressions. Finally, I flipped back to the used pages and doodled equations across my old figures from a shock track run.

At first, my head would snap around at every sound, whenever a board creaked or a tap dripped. Only the ticking of Rich's watch was soothing enough not to startle me. But after a while, I started getting bored and my mind wandered. Knowing Rich, this watch fob would be all that was left of him by now, unless there were ashes his cremation society had yet to scatter at sea. Those thoughts made for more melancholy, leaving me bored and sad, a bad mix of emotions to feel inside a supposedly haunted house.

I decided I needed distraction. Digging out George R. Stewart's _Storm_ from my suitcase, I settled in to read. _Storm_ might not have been a classic except to me, but it'd been a big milestone on my path to choosing atmospheric physics. That, and considering how the F.B.I. would react to an atomic physicist who loved cock and lacked tits. Anyhow, the book was comforting. Probably it was too comforting because soon my head was nodding over the pages.

***

Rich gave me books for Christmas. They were never pricey, but he had a knack for choosing ones I'd like. My gift this year, for my first trip back from college since I'd left for training camp in June, was no exception. It was a novel called _The Great Gatsby_ , and I'd taken the time to skim the first chapters while Rich cleared the table, piled up dishes in the sink, and cut the Yule cake that his housekeeper had made for our Christmas Eve's dessert before she went home to deal with her own family's Christmas.

He came in, maneuvered around the Christmas tree, and set down a plate and fork on the candle stand table next to the old tapestry chair where I was sitting. "Coffee?"

I put the book aside. "Not if you're going to run around getting it. Take five, would you? I can brew some coffee later. Or you can. Whoever."

"I have to admit, I'm ready to try this cake." Setting his plate down, he took the other armchair and nodded at my new book. "Well?"

"A home run like usual. Already interesting." I scratched my nose, thinking. "Carraway shouldn't be crushing on this guy Gatsby. That's not going to end well." The lines around his eyes crinkled as he smiled. "What?"

"Not that I don't agree with you, mind, but most critics might be surprised by your particular interpretations."

"Yeah, well, they're not homosexuals." As always, I felt the relief of being able to say that word without glancing around for eavesdroppers. Not wanting to make this glorious normality into a big deal, I picked up the plate by my elbow and tried a bite of the Whisky Dundee. "Mmm."

Rich nodded agreement as he chewed. Then he swallowed and said, "All praise to Mrs. Croom, the provider of our feast. It's nice that you share my warped tastes in desserts, as well as in other arenas."

I shook my head. "Those shared tastes are better than nice for me. I would have lost my marbles if you hadn't been around to explain why my birds and bees were all boys." His expression was indulgent, but I was serious.

I was also seriously noticing something that I couldn't have cared less about as a confused kid, something that'd only seeped into awareness around the time I'd fled Bradlow for the bigger world. For a man past forty, Rich was a looker. His running – another taste we shared – kept him in training. Lean muscles shifted under his clothing as he settled back in his chair to eat more cake. Even after a close shave, he had a five o’clock shadow that made him seem more male in a cardigan than some guys managed in a uniform. The way his eyebrows tented over his deep-set eyes lent his gaze a saturnine quality that I'd bet turned smoldering between the sheets. And his hands were huge, reminding me of a certain myth that I'd already heard from my fellow florals at Cal. Amazing how six months of varied, if secretive, sex could change a guy's perspective. Unthinkably ancient now seemed intriguingly experienced.

All Rich seemed interested in was changing the subject. "How's Maud?" I'd let him get away with the veer, I decided. For now.

"Great. She was ready for a long trip with her pals after seven years of unanticipated kiddie care. You should see the Christmas presents she shipped me back from Peru."

"I'm not sure what I'll do with the pan pipes she sent me."

"Blow musically?" I asked, and he snorted around the bite of cake he'd just put in his mouth. After he got that out of the way, he looked both amused and wary, which only fed the flare of interest I'd just felt.

I took a deep breath. Somewhere, some observer was telling me not to be stupid, but that unseen oracle of a future that'd already happened wasn't loud enough to stop me. "Rich."

"Yes?"

Why was this so much harder than taking up the offer of some stranger in a bar? Feeling as if the starter's pistol had just been raised, I blurted out, "Can I stay here with you tonight?" Even as I said the words, I knew they were a false start.

He paused with his plate of cake in one hand and his loaded fork in the other. After a moment, he put the fork's burden in his mouth and chewed again, but there was a mechanical air to the mastication, and he put down his plate and fork right after he was done. I concentrated on looking confident, which probably only made me look belligerent.

Rich had to swallow more than once before he could speak. "Now, I'll just go ahead and assume that you meant to ask if we could fuck and not if you might sleep in the spare bedroom."

I blinked at the strong language, but said, "That's it, yeah."

His face seemed distant when he shook his head and said, "No."

"Rich—" I started to protest.

"I'm sorry, Al," he said, "No. Nothing against your looks, mind. Now that you've come into them at last, I'd wager you set pulses racing every time you cross your campus on the way to classes. However, you're still not the sort of game I've ever set out to stalk."

I stared at him, frustrated and fuming, as he said again, more gently this time, "I'm sorry." And then he rubbed his chest. He rubbed his chest, right above his heart, as if something was hurting. When I saw that gesture, I felt as if my own heart was trying to leap up into my throat and yammer.

Back when I was a kid, if something awful enough was coming, my sleeping brain would twist my dreams around, trying to escape. What happened next felt like those old efforts. My mind thrashed. Suddenly the real me, the twenty-three-year-old graduate student, was talking with Rich, not the eighteen-year-old freshman still half-green from a resort town adolescence. Instead of starting the fight that should've come next, instead of ending by letting him freeze me out, I studied Rich. And I saw what I couldn't see at eighteen.

"You're afraid," I said. There was a pause. Rich raised eyebrows above a wry expression. But he'd also stopped rubbing his chest, so I kept talking. I said, speaking slowly as I worked out the details, "You want to brush me off because you don't want to foul us up over some cheap sex." I paused, examined his face, and then corrected myself. "No, wait. You don't want to chance the sex not being cheap. Okay, that's screwy."

The wry expression slid off his face, and I knew I'd been right. His tone was grave when he said, "Cheap or not, yours is a bad idea."

And five years of me reluctantly drifting away from him after this Christmas Eve, only to be yanked up short by his death, was a good idea? Then fuck good.

Rich was too smart to be talked out of whatever notion was bugging him without a lot of jawing, though, and I knew he'd try to duck the jawing. I decided to take a shortcut. "You sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

"Great." I was careful to sound a little sullen. "That's great. I'll make coffee." I got up.

He could no more have resisted rising to that bait than most rainbow trout can resist a well-tied fly. A host's courtesy had him up on his feet and saying, "No, I can—"

After so many years, you'd think he would've known better. We both ran long distances, but I'm also a sprinter. I can move fast, and I did.

None of the people who'd molded me – my parents, the teachers, Aunt Maud, the coaches, Rich – encouraged settling fights physically, so I was awkward with the clinch. But I was also two decades younger than he was, and I took him by surprise. I had my arms around him before he thought to struggle, and he only tried one or two hard shoves before he gave up.

"Now what exactly is this?" he asked me. His words were mild, but, even at close quarters, I could see that his eyes had narrowed.

"Me making my point in a Fuller Brush Man kind of way. I might still be green, Rich, but I'm no longer a kid. You can't scrape me off simply because you're the adult."

"Just now, I'm not able to scrape off anyone," he said, still mild, still dangerous. I'd managed to pin both of his arms.

"You could get free if you wanted to. I mean, if my touching you was as bad as you hinted a minute ago, you could." I poked one forefinger against his shirt and the rib beneath it. "This doesn't seem too scary." My other hand had a good grip on the seat of his trousers, and I hauled back to tug the tight cloth still tighter across what was starting to happen up front. "Neither does this. And I must be suitable game after all."

I let go, took one step back. "Talk to me, would you? I don't need an advice column's worth of explanation, but something more than 'a bad idea' would be nice." When I glanced down at his trousers, his interest had increased. Without thinking, I reached out and ran my hand over the interested area, then knuckled him gently. "Cheap sex would be okay by me."

"Cheap," he said, and snorted. Now it was his turn to take me by surprise. He stepped forward, grabbed me in his own version of the python wrap, and kissed me. The kiss was a shock. I'd had many mouths around my cock since leaving Bradlow, but not many lips caressing my own. No opening mouths. No wet heat joining wet heat. None of this tongue touching tongue business. No thrusting up above to match what hips were doing down below. No kissing. Kissing was much too—

I twisted my head away. My voice was hoarse when I said, without meeting his eyes, "Intimate. The expense. Getting stuck. One of us on the other, I mean." I stopped. Then I said, "Crap. I can't talk. I think you broke my brain."

"With just a kiss or two?" His tone was sardonic, but his expression seemed as startled as I felt, as if he'd astonished himself by kissing me.

"Hell, no." I had to grin. "I'd posit oxygen deprivation, as all my blood rushed elsewhere." In fact, enough blood had rushed elsewhere for me to try wheedling. "If I scout's-honor promise that this will be cheap as dirt, could I get some first aid?"

"You don't give up, do you?"

In a place far away that I didn't want to think about right now, I had given up, and for the wrong reason. But I'd seen where that led. "No, I don't." I worked a hand between us, felt around again. Oh, hey. More interest. A lot more. Yeah. Hello, Rich.

"You never do give up." He shook his head. But his arms were also loosening to give me the room required to get him free.

"Yeah. No." I unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned his trousers. His open zipper scraped across the back of my hand as I slipped past it. "But that's cheap sex for you." He wore boxers; easy access. And there he was, long, hard, and flushed. "Think of those pests in the men's rooms," I added, half-distracted with what I had in hand. "They keep coming back, too." My fingers fisted around him, and I set a good, steady rhythm against that smooth, cool skin. I couldn't keep up the distracting chatter, not with Rich. Clearing my throat, I asked him, "Let me jack you, okay?"

Unlike the indirect way of asking, this was a clean start. His ears were turning red, but his gaze was steady and searching. After a few long seconds, he said, "All right." Then he raised one hand to ruffle my hair before he thought better of the familiar gesture. Instead, he dropped his hand low to my groin where it would do some good, and I pushed forward against the welcome pressure.

I glanced at his face – sure enough, his gaze smoldered above the slight smile – and then studied his cock, hard in my hand as I picked up the rhythm again. Swollen, dark, veins standing out, it was sexy as hell. His big fingers were cupped around me through the cloth of my chinos, working awkwardly because of what I was doing with him. Even so, I wanted to thrust into his naked palm, grind until I spattered on his skin. I wanted the taste of his cock on my tongue. I wanted his ass, hot and tight, tugging around me as I thrust and drew. I wanted more kisses, wet and sweet, and him saying—

Too serious. Stay cheap. "Hey," I said, "After I've jacked you off? Blow me."

Minutes later, eyes shadowed, down on his knees, he did. But when I came in his mouth, I wouldn't have traded what I felt for a million bucks: nothing as cheap as a fortune.

 

III

 

I groaned, rolled over, and buried my head in my blankets. Now, that had been embarrassing. Not only had I failed to keep watch like I'd meant to, I'd wallowed around in a wet dream instead. What the hell would you call my latest creative effort, anyhow? If at first you don't trip Rich, try, try again?

Rich would've been amused. Reluctantly, I grinned into the blankets at my imaginary, departed mentor. Then, rolling back over, I grabbed my new watch, still ticking loudly and comfortingly, and found my lantern with my free hand. Eleven-fifteen in the evening. Ick. Also, drying spunk in my shorts, somewhere out past ick. Not to mention, I'd squirmed around while sleeping on my book, leaving an indentation that would linger.

Around me, the supposedly haunted house was quiet. Not even a cricket had gotten inside to vary the monotony. The moon, waxing right now, had set or was hidden behind the clouds. No light, not even streetlight, was coming through the dirty windowpanes. I found I didn't want to wash in that pitch-black bathroom, which made me huff out my breath in renewed exasperation with myself before I got up, grabbed my lantern, and went.

The floorboards creaked under my feet. The furniture, bulky under its dustsheets, seemed to loom with distant indifference. The pipes clanged again when I turned on the taps, but the water ran clear in the yellow circle of light. I used the toilet, scrubbed and dried, changed my shorts, and washed my hands. I was inspecting my expression in the mirror over the sink again when I heard a knock on the front door. The knock was close to a pound, if a polite one. I went to answer faster than I needed to. It gave me an excuse to stop looking in the mirror.

Instead, I got to aim the lantern at a perky carhop outfit, one containing a figure that even I, in an abstract way, knew was lush. But I was more interested in the bemused expression on the familiar face and the cardboard cake box being held out toward me.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"Hello, Mister Gracious. Fred phoned and said you were holed up in this house on a job, and he doubted you'd eaten dinner." Mercedes, Fred's fiancée, worked swing shift as a carhop to pay for her library school. For some reason, maybe because I didn't talk to her chest as often as most red-blooded males did, she'd taken a liking to me. "Knowing you, I was sure he was right." Shoving the cake box forward into my chest, she said, "Cheeseburger, coleslaw, and french fries, still fresh from the end of shift. Eat the food including the coleslaw, save the plate." She'd taken a liking to me as if I was a retarded little brother, in fact.

I took the box and opened its lid. The contents smelled like heaven. "I did have dinner. I ate some baked beans."

She rolled her eyes. "Cold?"

"Yeah. Thanks for the meal. I'm not inviting you in, though."

"I wouldn't come in. The place is creepy." True, the yard was kind of spooky in this light. She continued, "Haunted, yes?"

"That's the story, all right, although no one's been clear on the details." I studied her. "Are you off tomorrow?"

"Yes, and yes."

You had to think fast to keep up with her. "Fred already told you about the questions I wanted him to ask."

"And, yes, I will speak with the local librarians I know about this place. You will owe me, though."

"I will."

She sniffed and then smiled. Taking the box away from me, she stretched up on her toes and kissed my cheek. Then she shoved the box back into my chest. "Be careful, okay? You aren't very sharp right now."

"No, I'm not. And, yes, I'll take care."

Agreeing with her when she was right was a good tactic. Giving me one more flashing smile, she turned and was gone, heels clicking briskly along the sidewalk. The front yard was still quiet; it smelled like rain out here. Still, I felt no need to linger. When I craned to make sure Mercedes had a ride, I saw Fred's car parked down the block under a streetlight, and freed a hand from the box to wave before I retreated into my haunted house.

For a while, the warm meal helped to push away the darkness and silence. I finished the last forkful of coleslaw and put the plate back in its box. Then I shoved the box toward the outside wall. I'd worry about cleaning up tomorrow.

I thought about trying to stay up, but anything unusual would probably rouse me. Besides, I wanted my brain working again in the morning. So, I turned off my lantern, laid back in my bedroll, and tried to doze off again.

This time, of course, my nerves wanted to stay awake. I spent what must have been a good half hour turning over from time to time, trying to ignore the unyielding dark beyond my closed eyelids. I wanted to think about Rich; less than useful. Instead, I forced myself to count things – imaginary sheep, my own breaths, the ticks of the watch – until I lost focus and slept.

I didn't wake up until after what must have been the first thud.

***

At first, I didn't know what had woken me from dreamless slumber. I lay in the dark, sleepy and sullen, wondering why I wasn't in my bed. Then I thought the rain on the roof had disturbed me, and tried figuring how strong the storm was from the rate of the rainfall. I was getting drowsy again when I heard the second thud, off toward the back of the house.

The loud, dull noise sounded familiar, and I poked at my memory for a few seconds, trying to recall when I'd heard such a sound before. At last, I got it: the time I'd seen a guy from U.S.C. pick up a shot-put that was heavier than he'd expected, lose his grip, and drop it onto the wooden floor of the field house. We'd stopped changing to stare at him, many of the guys adding comments that'd made him flush. I'd enjoyed the chance to drop my usual guard and get a good look. He'd been a dish.

A third thud. Whoever was in here with me had a good supply of shots. My hand reached out and picked up my lantern from where I'd left it on my suitcase, which was a great idea even if I had a tighter grip on the wooden handle than I'd have liked. Trying to keep my breathing quiet, I sat up and switched on the light. As the beam darted around the dining room I didn't see anything, or at least nothing that wasn't silent, still, and covered by a dustsheet. I looked at my pocket watch. Ten after two in the morning. Wonderful.

Thud. After this one, I had a better direction: the thuds were over by the bedrooms. And the pacing of the sounds, the even intervals, wasn't anything I'd heard before in a house. Not that unusual was the same as unnatural, I told myself. I wasn't a structural engineer. There were probably good explanations for the sounds that I couldn't come up with right now, just after waking up in a supposedly haunted house.

The next thud might have seemed mocking if it hadn't sounded so heavily, relentlessly, neutral.

I didn't believe in ghosts. And if you didn't believe something, you shouldn't start just because the pressure was on, at least not without good reasons for changing your mind. After taking a deep breath, I got up, walked over into to the little corridor running parallel to the back wall of the dining room, and listened.

Thud. The sound was inside the nearest bedroom, the one across the corridor in front of me. I brushed the fingers of my free hand across the hilt of the field knife on my belt before reaching for the doorknob. As I was about to grasp the knob, someone grabbed my shoulder.

I whirled around, half-crouched, almost slamming the lantern into a wall. The shaking beam showed nothing behind me but the dining room and part of the living room. Empty. Nobody. As I stared, I heard another thud from the bedroom. At that reminder of an unlocked door at my back, I twisted to end up with my back to the corridor wall.

It took me a while to make myself reach for that doorknob again, long enough for me to notice that the thudding in the bedroom had stopped. I listened for a time that seemed to last an hour. All was quiet. The thick silence of the nighttime house had returned. Licking dry lips, I got a good grip, turned the doorknob, and opened the door.

Behind the door was—a bedroom. I shone the lantern beam this way and that, making sure I covered every inch of the room before I stepped inside. Walking in there was still one of the hardest things I'd ever done. Finding nothing but a fat-cushioned armchair, a set of oak bureau drawers, and a wrought iron lamp stand under dustsheets was a big anticlimax.

"Okay," I said softly to the bedroom. Louder, I added, "That was strange."

The dim and dusty bedroom was unimpressed by my observation. Going over to the window on the back wall, I wrestled with the sash until I got it open. Outside, the rain fell steadily. Blocks distant, someone sounded a horn, probably at a near miss on wet streets. Close by in the back yard, I heard nothing but water.

"Strange," I said again, although I didn't really want to speak while facing the yard for some reason. I started to turn away from the window and then turned back to close it. Right now, a skunk or a cat looking for shelter from the rain would give me my own heart attack. I made sure the door to the bedroom was shut securely behind me, too.

After another minute's thought, I went back to my bedroll in the dining room and sat down. Then I rebuilt my backrest and got out Storm. There wasn't a chance in hell for more sleep, I thought, even if sleeping had seemed like a good idea, which it didn't. Something had happened in this house that I didn't understand, no matter what that something might have been.

After staring sightlessly at the same page for a while, I shook my head, put down my book, got out my lab notebook, uncapped my pen, and started writing.

I think it's fair enough to edit out some details here and stick to noting that the rest of that Friday night, although quiet aside from the rain, still stank. Good idea or not, I spent way too much time poking myself in the arm to stay awake. But fatigue and nerves took their toll. About six in the morning, as some gray light sifting through the windows finally joined the lantern's beam, I dozed off again.

***

I woke with a start. Outside, the rain was still falling. Around me, the house was silent, but the dining room was brighter now, the contents not so much looming as gloomy. But the lighting would have been dim even if the grime on the windows hadn't blocked out part of the daylight. Hydraulic pressure got me up and drove me back into the bathroom, a room that at least had the merit of familiarity. I made darn sure the door was locked and the window was open before I did anything involving dropped trousers, though.

That morning may have been the first time I've ever been happy to wash in cold water. The experience steadied my nerves before I had to shave. When I was done, I changed my shirt, grabbed my jacket, and opened the front door.

All the rain hadn't done anything for the yard. As mud, it was still the bleakest patch of neighborhood landscaping I'd ever seen. I went out on the porch and watched a while, but I didn't see anyone exit the nearby houses, not even to walk a dog. And I didn't expect a crowd later, either. Sure, it was only nine on a Saturday morning, but no one would rush out to mow the lawn in the rain. Anyone who did come outside would probably be driving off to look for last minute Christmas presents.

So much for my idea of checking with the neighbors about the history of this place. Rain makes people sullen in L.A., and I wanted more than a clipboard and a cobbled-up story about some survey on my side when I asked about something likely to be a sore topic. I went back into the house, grateful to leave the repulsive yard behind.

I wasn't going to sit around brooding, I decided, twiddling my thumbs while I waited to see if the research project that I'd farmed out to Fred and Mercedes harvested any information. Now was the time to do what I should have done yesterday: search the house thoroughly.

For several hours, pausing only for a breakfast of canned corned beef and a lunch of canned green beans mixed with canned chicken, I worked my way slowly through the rooms. I looked in all the closets, under every dustsheet, and inside each cupboard. I made lists. I climbed up into and peered around the crawl space that substituted for an attic. I unreeled a surveyor's tape and measured the floors, the walls, the doors, and the windows. I pulled out my field thermometer and the swing psychrometer that I'd packed along to see if I could find any of the cold spots that show up in ghost stories all the time. I bet I looked hilarious whirling that psychrometer around my head inside a kitchen, but I felt grim.

I didn't locate anything. During what passed for daylight, I found no blood, no pools of clammy mist, no strange words scrawled across the floorboards when I shifted the furniture. Still, something other than my nerves was bothering me about this place.

Around three in the afternoon, I sat down in the dining room to pick over my data. Outside, the rain kept falling, but the way the fall had slowed hinted that the storm would pass soon. I really wanted some sunlight. The gloom hadn't broken all day. I was glad I'd brought along extra batteries for my lantern, even if I wasn't sure that I had a replacement bulb.

Serendipity is the word Rich had taught me for what happened next. I reached for my lantern to double-check the bulb, and as my hand closed around the handle, I paused. Lantern light, most of the night. And what had been missing? Dive-bombing moths. Or gnats. Or mosquitoes, for that matter. In fact, I hadn't seen any bugs, alive or dead, during the entire search today.

Just to make sure, I went back and checked the other rooms. No, plenty of dust but not one squashed ant, fly's corpse, or abandoned spider web. There hadn't been any worms taking refuge from drowning on the front walk, either. At last I had isolated something strange about this house, and it was an anomaly and three-quarters. What kind of building had no bugs in it? 

Not a house where I wanted to be.

But what the hell was going on here?

***

Fred and Mercedes showed up around five with an elaborately casual air that told me they hadn't wasted a whole day with the apartment freed from my spoilsport presence, chasing down old ghost stories. I knew their research would be sparse. But they brought apologies in the form of a meal for us all. My share was a steak sandwich, macaroni salad, and fruit salad from the drive-in. Mercedes would return the plates when she went back for her shift after we were done. So, we all settled in on a spread-out blanket in the dining room for a fast chat and chew. Picnic in the haunted house, whoopee.

Fred brought news of another package from Bradlow. "There's a big crate down at the depot, but they weren't delivering that on a Saturday," he reported. "They'll drop it off first thing Monday morning, and I'll stow it safe from those looters upstairs."

"Thanks," I said. "I'll take a look-see before I leave for the bus station."

"If you're still around, you will," Mercedes said with dark relish. "I wouldn't stay in any place that has its own built-in exterminator. You might get mistaken for a cockroach."

"Not a stretch for Gregor Samsa, here," Fred said, and some seconds of jostling followed, punctuated by eye rolling from Mercedes. "Humor aside," he said, when he was done straightening his Hawaiian shirt, "Mercedes is right. Even an ignorant physicist like you should know how strange those missing insects are." Fred had a right to address the subject. He was studying graduate-level biology in a desperate bid to avoid medical school and an endless future of my son the doctor. The demands of research may have accounted for the speculative look on his face when he added, "Do you think there are any mites left?"

"Don't start," Mercedes told him. "You have cultures to check at the lab tonight, remember?" Her gaze continued on to me. "As for you—"

"Pax!" I held up both hands. "One strange noise or light and I'm out the door, money or no money. No way am I going to end up as a horror movie cliché."

"Especially if you consider what Mrs. Pascal from La Pintoresca branch had to say when I called her." She smiled sweetly. "Welcome to the 'Happier Hunting Grounds'."

"Yeah?" I wasn't Rich. I didn't get her reference, probably to some book she'd read as a librarian-in-training.

"This neighborhood is one big pet cemetery. The rate at which coyotes snatch up the outdoor cats is a local legend."

"If it is coyotes," Fred said. "I wonder if the problem's this house."

"The neighbors wonder, too."

We all considered the new information. "Maybe a gas leak?" I asked.

"Heh?" Fred sounded dubious. "For, what, thirty years?"

"We don't know that the bugs have been vanishing that long."

"The pets have been disappearing for a while," Mercedes said.

"Wait." I picked up Mr. Krebs' folder of clippings and reports. "If I remember right..." I did. "Here's a clipping about the cops stepping in on a fight between the old guy who lived here in the thirties and a neighbor. A fight over a poodle."

"Over a decade, then," Fred said. "Something's loco, all right."

Mercedes nodded agreement. "And I'd imagine the something's not a maniac, either, unless you can believe in one who'd creep around sweeping up spider webs."

That observation killed the conversation. I resurrected it with, "If the situation's so bad, I'm amazed none of the neighbors have had an accident on the porch with a lit match and a leaky can of gasoline."

"We'll make inquiries tomorrow, but what makes you think someone hasn't tried?" Mercedes said. 

Fred muttered at the same time, "I'm asking Pelo about a gun."

"However, tonight we have to leave," Mercedes concluded, checking her wristwatch. Then she shifted her gaze to me and said, "Maybe you should, too." She started scooping up dishes, and Fred got up to help her.

I shook my head. "Enough tenants have lived here that I think someone would have noticed if people were dropping dead all the time."

"No, they get murdered instead," said Fred.

"You think I'm risking homicide?"

"If you're gonna ride a camel, you're ending up with blisters on your butt." Fred scowled. "We might not get back tomorrow. There's Advent Mass and then Sunday dinner."

"It's Mother Ribera's turn, which means that we'll be expected to visit my mother afterwards," Mercedes said. "That will drag on."

"We can ditch it all if you want, guy," Fred said.

I liked them a lot right then, even knowing how they'd change toward me if they learned who I really was. They might not mean to change, but – yanked between where they were going and what they didn't want to leave behind – they would. Maybe I was being unfair, too cynical, but at least my cynicism gave me the strength to say, "No, go ahead. One funny event and I'm leaving anyhow."

Mercedes pursed her lips. "I'd be generous about what you mean by 'funny'." Before she went out the door, she gave me another peck of farewell, which Fred watched with the amiable tolerance of a fiancée with his stem well wound. "Be careful," she admonished me again.

"You bet. I'll be better prepared than an eagle scout. Although I'm going to have to catch some shut-eye before nightfall. For some reason, I'm bushed again."

"Fear will do that to you," was Mercedes' parting shot.

"I thought fear was supposed to cause insomnia, not cure it," I told my alarm clock after I'd dug it out of my suitcase. Like most clever retorts that arrive too late and are sent to the wrong address, my words earned only silence.

 

IV

 

My dream self wasn't surprised to be back in Rich's store. I did notice, glancing around, that the place had changed from the last time I'd seen it while awake, about a year ago. That captain's wheel was new, and the tallboy was gone. There were curios shelved along the far wall that I didn't remember. I also saw a stack of books on the battered mahogany counter, and a few more books were scattered next to an open crate. In front of the counter, on the old oriental runner, something was sprawled that I knew I didn't want to see. So, I didn't look. Instead, I went through the counter flap, behind the beaded curtain, and into the small back room.

Rich still had his roll-top desk, its cubby holes neatly filled with paperwork and old prints. He had the reproduction of Church's "The Wreck" hanging over his desk, and the two Windsor chairs. He was sitting in one of the chairs, leaning back and studying the grounded ship in the painting as if it had something to say, his reading glasses folded on the pile of paperwork in front of him. He was still Rich, still lanky and handsome, but he seemed tired. He looked his age.

I knew this was how he must have been on the morning last week before he'd collapsed. This thought made me clench a fist. When I did, as if he'd heard my gesture, he looked up at me. "Now, what are you doing here?" he asked, surprised. "That's a long trip to make from Los Angeles merely for Christmas."

"I wanted to see you."

The pleasure he couldn't hide gave way to wariness and then to distant friendliness. "Well, it's nice to see you, too." But his eyes weren't smiling.

I hated his tone. "Not nice." Without asking permission, I sat down in the other Windsor chair next to his desk. "After these last few years, I've had it with nice."

He started to say something, and then didn't. Instead, wary again, he asked, "What do you mean?"

"Do you really think I'd come all the way up here, now that Maud's gone, only to say 'Hi' to an old mentor?" I snorted. "And you wouldn't encourage me. One more Christmas present through the mail this year, one more letter with it that wouldn't raise an eyebrow if read out to a meeting of the D.A.R."

"Al—"

"No, listen." Hell, I didn't know the right words. There was nothing from the classes or the bars, my open life or my hidden one, to help me with this. But Rich had leaned forward a little, listening, which at least let me try, "I miss you."

He sat up as if I'd cursed him.

I tried again. "I miss you." Feeling desperate, I added, "You're the only guy not a scientist who ever wanted to hear about the Coriolis Effect. You can make an omelet. You quote the Marx Brothers, and you know what books to give me for Christmas." I swallowed. "You taught me about pushing off the blocks and German beer." I had to stop, but managed to add before I did, "Your eyes smile when your mouth does. Usually."

Rich looked stunned. Once again, he started to speak and stopped. He tried a second time before he settled on, "Hellfire," for his third attempt. With that word, he rubbed his fingers across his forehead. "I give up," he said at last, to no one I could see.

Then, looking straight at me, he said, "On your side, you nicknamed all the city council members after characters from comic strips, and good, pithy choices they were. You read _Jane Eyre_ and liked it, but claimed Jane punching Rochester in the nose would have improved the plot. You run like the west wind. You never once complained about Maud, me, or our friends being so odd." He added, softer, "You grew up to be incendiary, especially for me. I should have tried fitting that piece into the puzzle. I didn't have the nerve."

"Yeah."

"Did you ever wonder what I did before I sold antiques?"

"Sure, but you'd have told me if you wanted me to know." He raised his eyebrows. "Okay, I'll bite. Professor, right?"

"Right."

"Literature?"

"No, indeed. Classical languages, doing research in folklore and mythology."

I contemplated this. Dream Rich's solution fit together all the clues real Rich had dropped over the years. "I guess that explains a lot."

He shrugged. "My family's idea of an education gave me a head start. But that's neither here nor there. I lost my position – resigned, ducking just before the axe swung – when it came out that I was homosexual."

"Not caught with a student," I said, absolutely certain, and this time his eyes smiled, too.

"I taught at a woman's college. But, even ducking, I still lost everything for the sake of a brief infatuation. Position, community, friends, wife." I winced, and he nodded, lips pressed thin, before parting them to add, "My good name. My real name, to tell truth."

"Okay, I get why you were scared. I mean, even with your early advice, this life's been kind of a struggle. You know, duck, weave, and every so often take a wild punch from someone who hates our sort?" He nodded again. "And that's without anyone swinging an axe, like happened to you."

"Yes. I didn't want that happening to you."

I said, "Still a mistake to duck me, though."

"Yes."

He'd said what I'd wanted to hear. There didn't seem to be anything else to talk about. I knew what I wanted to do instead, but not now, not given what was sprawled out on the other side of his counter. But I didn't want to wake up, either. I didn't want to say goodbye again. So, I said, "Hell. I wish I wasn't stuck in this stupid haunted house."

Rich, who'd lounged back in his chair and was now smiling at me over steepled fingers, sat bolt upright and lost the smile. "What?"

My look at him must have been glum. I didn't want to remember the truth. "This is all a dream. I'm camped out in a house that's supposed to be haunted, trying to earn the money to get home to your wake."

He studied me. His eyes narrowed. He asked, voice even, "Is that why I want so badly not to go out and look over the counter?"

"No, don't," I said, but he stood up and, in six long strides, went through the curtain and around the counter, where he could gaze down at what I'd been avoiding. I had to scramble to follow. His features stayed still at what he saw. But he went pale, pale as ashes.

At least he didn't rub his chest.

"Wake, you said?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"I remember now. It hurt. Then the dream. No, the dreams." He paused. "This isn't right." He turned to me, and his eyes were terrible and kind at the same time. "If this is your dream, it's time for you to wake up."

"No," I started to say, but I guess the inhabitants of dreams have more power in them than their visitors do. With a shock like missing a stair step, my eyes flew open.

***

I sat up, still tired. Everything was dark again. Somehow, I'd slept through the alarm. While I'd been sleeping, night had fallen. I leaned forward to pick up my trusty lantern.

A hand grabbed my shoulder. This time I recognized the grip. I spasmed, started to turn, and the big hand squeezed hard.

"Don't turn around," Rich said.

I closed my eyes. I opened them. It was dark either way. "Great. And now I've lost my marbles." My voice sounded like I'd gargled gravel.

The grip on my shoulder loosened some and Rich said, tone thoughtful, "That's a good, conservative explanation. Too bad it doesn't take my own experiences into account."

I snorted. "What experiences? As far as I'm concerned, you're my delusion."

"Hmm. Ideally speaking..." He trailed off for a moment, diverted, as always, by epistemology. Maybe he should have been a philosophy prof, rather than studying up on the spooky stuff.

Wait. What was I thinking, that my dead friend was sitting behind me in a haunted house? Was I cuckoo? I turned around: a mistake.

He wasn't a Hollywood ghost, not a guy in a sheet or a transparent figure like a movie image projected on mist. I wish he had looked like that. What I saw wasn't anything so sane.

If someone who'd never met a man had taken ropes of spider web, draped them over a framework of bones, and used the result as a marionette, it might have resembled what I saw. But the surface of the ragged thing crouched on the floor behind me shifted in a rhythm that mocked its hints of a skeleton. Its cold light wasn't blue or green like foxfire, either, but gray-black. And there was a smell: ashy, sweet, and musty all at once, the deadest of dead air.

My brain kept trying to force what I was viewing to resemble something – anything – I knew. I thought of the backlit, roiling belly of a tornadic thunderstorm I'd watched once on the high plains of Colorado, of lifting a lantern on a camping trip to see dusty mosquito netting around a cot thrash and billow as mice fled across it. But as hard as I tried, as many comparisons as I drew, I couldn't make this sight familiar.

I realized I was scrabbling at my bedclothes with both hands while making a low, whining noise. With an effort, I forced myself to stop. Then I closed my eyes again, which was better, even allowing for the smell. When I wasn't looking at Rich, he seemed closer to normal. Eyes shut, I somehow felt he was nervous as he waited for me to speak. I suppose his being anxious about my reaction to the spook show would make sense, in an insane kind of way.

"Rich," I managed.

"Al." The familiar, gentle tone made me clench my teeth against the pain and horror of what I'd seen.

"Best theory is me cuckoo."

He made a neutral noise.

He was talking inside my head, I realized. Cuckoo, cuckoo. But— "Me cuckoo or not, you're dead."

"Yes."

"What's the next theory if I'm not insane?"

"I don't know." Now he sounded like he was shoving down some pain and horror of his own. "This isn't any kind of afterlife that I might have anticipated even if I'd believed in such possibilities. It's more like being trapped in a waiting room as filmed by F.W. Murnau than anything out of the usual religious speculations."

"Who?"

"German expressionistic director, before your time. _Nosferatu_?"

"Nope."

"No matter. Later. There's something very wrong with this house, I can tell. You brought my watch in here?"

I started, and then groped for the pocket watch, still serenely ticking away. "Yeah. That mourning-jewelry fob is gr— Rich. You left me some sort of haunted watch?"

"So it seems." There was a pause. "The watch is supposed to be only a _mnemonikos_ , an aid to memory. And I never thought it truly was anything but a timepiece, no matter what the original owner told me. Even now, I'm finding it difficult to believe that any of Victor's occult nonsense could possibly work. That this kind of tripe could be true."

We both thought that over for a minute. He was the one who said, "I don't like the implications. To begin with, there are all those books I sold. The first of a number of problems."

"Uh-oh." I swallowed. "In a strange way, given the implications, I sort of hope I am having a nervous breakdown. At least, I do until I think about you being back." I added quietly, "I'd put up with a lot of problems for that."

"Thank you." He paused again. "I can't say I'm glad to be here. However," his voice went low and dark for a bit, "although I'm not happy to be back, I am happy to see you. So to speak."

I shuddered, but I realized I had this stupid, helpless smile on my face, too. "Can I turn on the lantern?"

"I'd imagine. Although what good that'll do if you don't open your eyes..." He trailed off to laugh.

I opened my eyes. Then I tried turning on the lantern to see if it would help, which it didn't. The thing that was Rich faded out of view but I could see it anyhow, which didn't make me any happier.

"Given your expression, I'm grateful there are no mirrors in here."

"Not ugly, just really strange," I hurried to reassure him.

"Well, now." The billowing surface smoothed out a little. "I suppose that's neither here nor there. Maybe you'd better tell me about this house of yours."

I did: real estate agent, murders, no bugs, blah, blah, blah. By the time I was done, I could look at him without wanting to scream like a starlet. Much.

"You're correct about this place having problems. A pressure here's focusing me. I feel as if I'm waking from a daze after being slapped. And I seem to remember that something troublesome was at work in that bedroom last night when I stopped you."

"Yeah, this house is a mess. Dead weeds and thudding in the dark, although what those have to do with each other I don't know." Remembering the thuds made me check Rich's watch. "Oh, hell." Almost two in the morning. "Why did I sleep so long?"

"An unhappy question, I agree, but not one that needs answering just now. I think you should concentrate on leaving."

I got up on my feet and then paused. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Are you leaving, too?"

"If I can, I will. Not that you should stay if I can't."

"Sure I should." The words were warmer than I'd intended.

"Now, just what is this house going to do, kill me?"

He had a point, but not a good one. "You could get, I don't know, dissolved. Dissipated." There was a pause, and I added, "I'm glad you don't do puns."

"Given my past opportunities, be very grateful." Even inside my head, his tone was mock-solemn. Yeah, I'd missed him. But my feelings also gave him an opening, and he knew that. "I would take it as a favor if you would at least try to leave, to make sure that you can."

I eyed him warily. He didn't seem to be in any shape to lock the door behind me, but I'd learned not to underestimate Rich. At the same time, he was right. I'd said I'd go through the front door if anything weird happened, and this had to qualify. "Okay."

After shrugging on my jacket, I picked up my lantern. He moved along with me through the archway and into the living room. I practiced turning my head to catch quick glimpses of him, and they weren't so bad after the first heart-lurching second. Give me a while, and I could get used to the view.

Pausing with my hand on the front doorknob, I said, "I'll walk the block. If no one calls the police, I'll be back in five minutes."

"Fine." This pause should have contained a smile. "I expect I'll be waiting."

"Ha, ha, ha." I grabbed one last, sideways glance as I opened the door. Then I turned to check where I was going before I stepped onto the porch.

I stopped like I'd hit a wall, backed right up, and slammed the door shut. Maybe I could get used to Rich, but what was out in the yard, I'd never get used to. Not at all. Not in the lifetime of the universe.

Rich didn't bother asking me questions as I leaned back against the front door, bracing as if I had to hold it closed. Instead, he went over to one of the windows. I couldn't call what he did looking out, but his form billowed and warped afterwards in a way that made me flinch.

"What was that?" I asked him.

He understood what I'd said, even given how choked my voice had been, an advantage to my being what I now really hoped was delusional. He said, "Something that shouldn't be. Something that won't be. Something that isn't."

I knew what he meant. Rich was horrible, but that had been much worse. Whatever was outside didn't look weird like Rich – it didn't look like anything but a faint warping all across the yard, as if you could see heat shimmering on a damp night – but some newly awakened sense of mine suddenly shrieked like a cat dropped in boiling water. A thing was pushing in toward the house out there, distorting what was normal the way massive objects warp space-time.

No wonder that thing outside seemed worse than Rich. Death – like any entropy, I guess – isn't fun but belongs to our existence. This something trying to get in felt so alien that it was past death, so strange that its mere presence would rip our reality into shreds. No, it wasn't deadly, it was obliteration. I got the distinction, now, and I wished I didn't.

"You, um, sense it too, huh?"

"I truly don't want to, but I do. Being dead doesn't help at all."

"Is it getting any closer?" There was the question I really wanted to ask, and me not sounding too shaky, either.

"No, everything's holding fast in here. But the yard is thinning."

That was enough to get me heading for the kitchen door. I cracked it open and promptly slammed it shut. Then I locked the door, as if that would somehow help with being in the center of the whirlpool. "Okay, maybe I'm not going out for a nighttime stroll." Those words were, of course, the cue for the first thud.

***

"Brave or stupid?" I asked myself after a long silence. Not getting an answer, I tried again. "Brave or stupid?"

Rich, looking ghastly by the stove, said, "Well, if you're consulting me, and I don't believe you are, I vote for stupid. I wouldn't go near that bedroom without quite a bit of preparation."

"Given the chance that there's some connection to what's out in the yard, you mean? Yeah." I stopped speaking to wait for the second thud. Between what was outside and what was inside, I had this urge to sidle closer to Rich. "Did that thud sound different to you? Wait, can you hear?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes. And, yes, the noise is louder."

"Good, because I'd sure hate to be hallucinating during my delusion."

Inside my head, he laughed. Even his new looks got easier on the eyes when he did.

I rubbed a hand across my face. "If I make it out of here, I'm not even reading _The Christmas Carol_ ever again. No more ghosts, present company excepted."

"Now, there's a thought." The tone was sardonic. "I'd hazard I'd be an interesting visitor to explain to roommates."

"After Fred gets married, you might as well move in. I'd bet you could deal with the guys upstairs. Bongo drums, the bastards."

"Late at night?"

"Oh, yeah."

Silence again. And here came the third thud.

I was okay, I really was. But I also needed to sit down. I felt like I'd been worked over by a ball-peen hammer. Wandering back into the dining room, I plopped down on my bedroll and stared at the archway to the little corridor. Closer to the thuds, farther from the yard, overall an improvement, I decided. So, I undid and got rid of my shoes and socks, which passed the time for two more thuds.

Rich made a noise as if he was clearing his throat. Great: that hint meant more trouble. "I'd hazard the pressure from outdoors is what holds me here. It's as if I was being pushed inwards from all sides, like a foot in a shoe."

"A field effect. Like magnets. Never mind, I'll explain later." Thud. "You're telling me you think you're gone again if we survive this mess."

"Yes."

"Damn it." If you can sigh those two words, I did.

"I'll spare you the natural-path-of-life, cracker barrel consolation."

"Speaking as one of society's unnaturals, hooray. Although, given what's out there, I feel more natural than even, uh, shredded wheat."

"You'd claim there's something natural about shredded wheat?"

"No. Point."

We both paused to wait for the next thud. Then I said, "If I do live, I'm keeping your watch."

"I would hope that you would."

"Yeah. Tell me something."

"What?"

"Sorry, tell me something that I wouldn't already know, that I couldn't have dragged into my delusions if I'm nuts."

"Ah." I could tell he was nerving himself up. "Bowen. Dr. Richard Bowen."

"Thanks."

"Although you do realize that I might have let the name slip when you weren't consciously paying attention, a phenomenon that may account for much of the so-called evidence for reincarnation."

"Gosh, thanks again, Professor Bowen." I yawned. "Rich." At least matters between us were better now, partially resolved, described more clearly in some complex, emotional equation with lots of operations and indeterminates, and a kind of handsome symmetry...

"Al."

...although I'd still miss Rich badly if I survived, what with his cardigans and crazy pals and heavy cock and cookies under the dome of the cake stand on the counter at Christmas...

"Al, you're falling asleep." Now he sounded worried.

I yawned again. "Sure, something's draining me. Stupid house. How many thuds?"

"Eight so far."

"More than last night. Wake me up if something genuinely new happens, okay?"

"I don't believe I can. Whenever you sleep—"

But I didn't get to hear him finish. Maybe that's just as well.

 

V

 

I needed a few seconds to recognize where I was. I'd only been in Rich's bedroom once or twice. And Rich was here, lounging on his bed and being distracting, really distracting. In fact, he was being dubious nightclub distracting.

Through the half-opened window, I could smell goldenrod and sage. Outside was a summer twilight, and he'd been running. Either that or he wore nothing but his old track shorts when no one was around to see. The radio was talking in the background. As Rich listened, he stroked his half-hard cock through the cloth of his shorts in the easy, idle way of a guy who wasn't sure if he'd keep going or not.

I didn't want to interrupt him, partly because he'd be embarrassed and partly because, well, I didn't want him to stop. He was listening to the sports news from Helsinki, though, and that made me decide I should make my presence known. In my last hurrah, I'd been to Finland with the U.S. Track and Field Team this summer, featured as the guy in photos your gaze slid past on the way to Bob Mathias. But I didn't think Rich was contemplating Bob as he worked, not with that expression on his face, both sad and satisfied.

"Hey," I said, keeping the word soft.

He looked up and his expression warmed before his hand sprang away from his groin and he flushed. But I don't think he was buried as deep in this dream as he'd been before, because he replied, "You did better than you thought you would."

"Yeah, but I'm done now. All those pictures make me too easy to recognize." He looked sad again. "Not to mention, I came this close to getting caught with a guy from the Brazilian team."

That made him laugh. "Not with one of the Comrades from the east?"

"I was listening to what you said about blackmail. Besides, they skew blond and I like 'em dark," I said, waggling my eyebrows at him.

His flush, which had been damping down, flared, but he laughed again.

Crap. I was indulging myself, and I knew why. I didn't want to go back to that house and face what would happen next. Sitting down on the side of his bed, I asked, "You know I'm dreaming, right?"

His expression went vague and then focused. "Yes." After a brief pause, he added, "You're drawing on another of my memories."

"Hubba-hubba," I said, letting him see I liked the idea. "I'd still better get back. We'd better get back."

"Yes." Rich caught my gaze and said, "Time to wake up."

Nothing happened. After a few seconds, I realized I was staring into his eyes like a B-movie heroine and glanced away. "Maybe you'd better try again." I looked back.

"Wake up." This time he sounded like a drill sergeant. Still no soap. "Hellfire."

Now I was worried. "I don't think I should be asleep."

"No." His eyebrows went down, distracting, I admit. "What else worked to wake you?"

"Not another heart attack, okay? I don't think I could take that." He seemed bemused, and I realized that I'd licked my lips. Nerves. "Yeah. Or." There was a third possibility. And the circumstances were right, so it wouldn't be me taking advantage or anything.

"Too long a duration."

"You have a better idea? We can try playing Ping-Pong, but that still might take until game point." I reached over, put a hand on his thigh, caught the hem of a shorts leg, and tugged. "The fun answer's not always the wrong answer."

"I've been thinking about these dreams of yours. Granted a relationship between them and some of my more esoteric past reading...." Losing the thread, he gave me a look.

"Keep talking." Okay, my hands were busy.

"My sympathies lie with your Brazilian," he said, and pulled me down on top of him.

For a few minutes, it was enough to rut against him, my cock trapped in my pants, his in his shorts, hard against hard while we kissed. The kissing was still good, wet and nasty enough to excuse the sweetness, louder even than the radio. Rich had no problem with my weight as he worked beneath me, running his fingers across my back and then down to grab my ass, where he squeezed hard.

In most of my fantasies, he'd wear me like a cheap suit, fuck me mercilessly, with only his eyes as gentle as I knew him to be in real life. Now, though, I was surprised to find how much I wanted to be in him. The thought made me sweat. I pulled my mouth free so I could ask, "Up your ass?"

"Yes," he said, before he used his newly freed mouth to lick at, suck at, my neck. "Al," he added, for no particular reason.

My mind was blank as I raked my fingers through his hair. He pushed back up, rubbing the bulge of his cock against mine again. Oh, right. "Hold on." His grip was strong. Great, but not what I meant. So, I pried him off in order to unbutton my shirt and then tug both it and my T-shirt off.

Rich lay there breathing heavily, then shook his head like a retriever fresh out of the lake before he said, "I have some lotion." I was unzipping my fly, and his gaze went south. For a second I thought we'd be back to the dry humping, but he stood up and peeled off his shorts.

I went off the bed and onto my knees, my own briefs and pants wrapped around my legs. I cracked one knee on the hardwood planks, but who cared? His cock was in my mouth and I was savoring that familiar, sharp taste, all the better for being Rich. I sucked hard, wrapped one hand around the base of him, and stroked the back of his legs with the other. Soon he was pearling, and the muscles of his thighs were twitching under my hand, so I eased away before I wanted to. The tip of his cock made a wet, popping noise coming out of my mouth, and I grinned as I looked up. One deep breath and I managed to ask, "Lotion?" with my voice as sweet as sugar.

Eyes glittering, cock slick, he could still snort. What a guy.

There was an open bottle of Cornhusker's sitting on the bedside table. I guess he had planned to run his evening's sprint all the way to the finish line. He picked up the bottle and tipped it while I took the chance to disentangle myself from my shorts. Then Rich got a good grip with a slick palm.

I yipped, and added, "Cold."

"If that's a problem I can wait," Rich said, but his hand didn't stop the slow, taunting stroke. His own cock shifted a little with his movement, still dark, wet, and hard. I licked a thumb before rubbing the pad across the ridge right below his cock's head, enjoying the twitch.

He pulled me down on top of him again.

"What about the quilt?" I asked. Heritage Jacob's Ladder, he'd once told me.

"Fuck the quilt. No, rather, fuck me."

Crude words from him sure heated me up. When he got on his hands and knees, I was rough when I worked fingers, slicked with Cornhusker's, into him. But the muscles within his ass gave way. I pumped a few times and then pulled out. "Okay?"

Rich turned his head, and his eyes seem to glint. "Yes, indeed."

I eased back and enjoyed the view of his shifting, graceful muscles, highlighted by hair, as he rolled over onto his back. He had no problem pulling his legs up enough for me to get my cock in place between his ass-cheeks.

It wasn't exhaustion that made my arm tremble as I held myself above him, looking down at his face, guiding my cock with my free hand, teasing myself with the prospect of his ass. I found my target, seated myself. Then I pushed from the hips.

I had to pause, barely inside, to see. His hands were clenched on my shoulders, and his hazel eyes were shadowed, half-shut. I smelled his sweat, noticed his right hand was clamping too tight, felt both an itch on my nose and my cock on the edge of coming: the heat and clamor of my feelings were better than any nighttime fantasy. After a few seconds of calculating percentages to calm my cock, I turned my head to lick the hand that was locked on me before I snapped my hips forward. Too hard, probably. His eyes went wide as I thrust. But his grunt wasn't pained, and his calves pulled me tight against him before they relaxed enough that I could move.

There should've been words, but all I could come up with was trash like, "Yeah," "Fuck, tight, ass," and moans; not exactly brilliant. Rich stuck to saying my name, but he could do more with that one word than I could with a paragraph of pornography.

He moved one large hand between us to his cock and pumped, and I had to watch that for a while. When I started thrusting again, it was so hard that his bed creaked. Then neither of us talked. We needed the breath for fucking.

With a harsh grunt, Rich came. His ass clenched around me, his grip tightened, and he grimaced, the expression better looking than it should have been. His spunk spattered across his stomach and chest, glistening amid dark hair. I stopped again to stare, and felt my cock throb in sympathy. Heat coiled tighter in my belly and groin. Beneath me, Rich took a few gasping breaths. He looked up at me, and he smiled. Then he ran a forefinger across his stomach before easing it into his mouth and sucking, his eyebrows raised in mock inquiry. Oh, the gorgeous bastard.

The next bit is a blur in my memory. All I recall is hot pleasure, the smell of sex, and Rich's ass. I also remember the expression on his face at the end, surprised and intent. Even I could feel the flow between us, and not just of spunk. But that only made the climax better as I spent for long seconds, as I woke.

***

Somehow, I wasn't surprised that, when I'd recovered enough to look, Rich seemed more solid. His gray-black glow had shifted toward a lichen gray-blue-green, easier on the eyes. The smell was fresher, too. "You're, um, better." My voice was thick, so I cleared my throat.

"I do believe you're right. In this house, each contribution of your, hmm, intimate self seems to pull me back toward life." He twitched. "Reuss must've been on to something, annoying as that notion is."

"Reuss?"

"We're going to have a lot of details to explain to each other if we get a chance, won't we? More important right now, what's happening to me has given me an idea. I think some of the deaths in this house power a certain, well, spell." He rushed past that word. "This spell jumbles together what should be apart, especially life and death. In turn, the unnatural merging weakens normal barricades, letting what's warping the yard force its way in toward this house, toward our world."

"Like the summoning in Faust, got you." When I sat up and looked around, the light was fading again. I checked my serenely ticking watch. Past six. Hell, I'd slept for sixteen hours. No wonder my body was complaining. "These naps keep getting longer."

"More is being drained from you as the days go by. And I'm not helping. For the sake of your safety, I'd be piecing together a way to move me along if we didn't have bigger problems."

"At least you have theories. I wasn't having any luck, so I'm glad one of us has already done the research. Peculiar but clean books that have to be reviewed to be sold, whoopee." I stretched and shuddered. "Speaking of clean, you think I can chance cleaning up? These dreams are messy."

"Why not? You might as well risk annihilation with a well-scrubbed face."

Even under the circumstances, I couldn't help grinning. "It's not my face that needs the scrubbing."

Inside the bathroom, I used the can and washed my hands. Then I reached for the window to open the sash before I yanked away my fingers.

I don't remember my dad saying a lot. He wasn't a talker. But the few words he spoke were smart and to the point. "Kiddo," he'd told me, "never open a warm door in a burning house," which had already saved me once. And the bathroom window felt awful, perverse in a way that only my new, extra sense could describe. Whatever was out in the yard was increasing the pressure like a boa constrictor. Was the exterior wall warping in a little?

This time, the speed of my shower wasn't due to cold water.

When I came back into the dining room, the sun had set. Rich seemed to be thinking, but he noticed my entrance and said, "You should eat something."

"A lot of something. I'm ravenous."

After turning on the lantern, I cranked open the cans of beef stew, creamed corn, and peas. While I ate, we talked, mostly about stuff that wouldn't interest anyone but us, which helped my digestion. Then he said, "I'd like to go through your notes. If you'd unpack what you brought along, so I can see what we can use for your defense, that'd also help."

With pauses to turn pages for him, I did. When I'd finished, he checked what might work for the occult version of weaponry.

He billowed, probably his version of a sigh. "No salt, no amulets, no incense, no musical instruments."

"Also, no elephants and no persimmons."

"I do take your point."

I was turning out my pockets when he asked, "Now, what's this?" The dark wafting of what served for his hand indicated my meteorological instruments.

"Field thermometer, sling psychrometer. I was checking for cold spots."

"You might have come up with something in the back bedroom late at night," he said absently. Then he added, abruptly intense, "I'm afraid you're going to have to break up your instruments."

While I was destroying everything the way he wanted, he described how his own, well, spell was supposed to fix the house. Dead of winter, birth of light: it all sounded screwy until he started worrying about the shapes that I'd dab onto my lantern using the wick from the psychrometer and mercury from the thermometers. I stopped work to look at him. "That's a problem? It's the only part I understand. You're setting boundary conditions. All you need is to adjust the way your patterns are painted so that the topological isomorphism is preserved after they're mapped onto three dimensions."

"One more reference to be explained later. I trust you to edit as you think best." His permission left me doing some hasty calculations while he looked over my sketch map of the house again. He said, "If only I could figure out exactly how the ritual was performed and maintained. There must be material foci involved for something like this, certainly ones bigger than the classic breadbox."

I was half paying attention when I told him, "I went through this place like a dose of salts. I even searched the furniture. Aside from tearing down the walls—"

I straightened, crumpling my paper, just as he said, "Eureka."

"Got it," I said, grabbing the folder of clippings. Back, back... "Here we are. 'Harold Whiteside, a well-known local builder', blah, blah, blah." I closed the folder. "There wasn't anything up in the crawlspace. And I measured all the interior walls: no room left over for anything fancy. Which only leaves the foundation slab."

He finished the thought I didn't want to finish. "Whatever Whiteside used must be stowed under the floorboards in that bedroom."

"Oh, brother." Reluctantly, I reached toward the pile of unpacked gear to disentangle my axe, setting it to one side before picking up my pencil again.

***

I guess nobody thought of checking what should have been a solid slab of concrete after the first murders. I'd rapped my way across the floorboards, but none of them had sounded different from the rest. So, I was worried Whiteside might have sunk his ritual equipment straight into wet concrete. I guess such a method would've blocked any later alterations. It turned out, he'd come up with something fancier than my idea of secret storage. I'd only hacked bits out of three floorboards before I found what we were after. "Some kind of cross-strut here."

We both examined that part of the floor. Then I worked away at a section of baseboard that came loose easier than it should have. Turned out, several floorboards were fastened together so they'd lift like a trap door once you cleaned out some glop around the edges. I didn't have a proper pry bar to slide through the ring that'd been hidden by the baseboard, but a leg broken off the wrought-iron lamp stand made an okay substitute. Standing to one side, getting a grip on the leg with both hands, I heaved. The trap was past big enough to make it awkward, and I couldn't really see around what I was doing, but the boards pivoted up faster than I'd expected. I grabbed and eased them down onto the floor. Sliding free the lamp stand leg, I stood up and turned around just as Rich, dead Rich, let out a moan.

The guy in the hole was alive.

He was manacled and chained to staples sunk into the concrete so he couldn't flail around, and his chains were wrapped with rags to muffle their noise. But one chain was slack enough that he could still move that arm a little. If I'd been able to look away from him and back at the underside of the trap door, I bet I'd have seen the dents from when he'd beat his wrist manacle against the boards. There wasn't much else he could have done: not only was he shackled, but I think his tongue had been cut out.

Except for the surgery, he hadn't much changed. By the light of the guy in the hole’s horribly familiar, gray-black glow, I could check details. His hair hadn't grown. He still wore his diamond pinky ring. His suit was mostly intact. He was as handsome as he must have been on that night his girlfriend was murdered in 1930.

I was backing away.

Except for his eyes, that is. Their gaze was so far past sane that mad was too rational a description. Even as I stared, his one hand rose ever so slowly, moving toward where the boards should have been above him as if he was beating through glue. But his eyes tracked me.

Still clutching my lamp stand leg like a useless crucifix, I backed into the far wall. Beyond it, out in the yard, the unthinkable pressed toward me.

Oh, and there were two skulls in the hole, desiccated heads really, tucked in above his head and below his right foot. The one above had been a tiny kid. Whiteside's younger son? And the one at his foot had been old. Sure, the elderly poodle-vanisher. Some sort of watchman before he died, maybe, still serving what he'd watched. Lots of lines and symbols painted in the hole, smoldering candle stubs, figurines made from small bones and green pine needles...

Rich was speaking to me urgently. "—as this day approaches, entwined life and death spawn such power that the intended vessel regains some control. He's what's been spooking the tenants, I'd imagine, as he struggles each year near this date." He hovered by me but didn't touch. Hello, Rich. How nice that you're only dead.

That thought made me blink at him. I tried to stop shivering. The should-be-dead guy in the hole tried for another thud. Rich tried more talk in my head, probably to snap me out of my shock. No one was having much luck. "But someone else must have run interference. And someone eventually has to complete the ritual, close the triad of youth, maturity, and age that'll open flesh to what's outside. Al, who's not in this hole?"

I heard the creaking of boards under footsteps.

"Whiteside's older son," Rich answered his own question, deep in my brain.

For a moment, I couldn't put the pieces together. I thought Fred and Mercedes had somehow gotten past the yard and opened my mouth to yell, only to find my voice wasn't working. I was still pressed against the wall, mouth open, showing the whites of my eyes, when through the doorway walked Whiteside Junior. Also know to me as Mr. Krebs.

I have a hard time explaining what happened next. I didn't think for a second that Krebs had come to save the day. He'd passed what was outside, entering the house without hesitation or doubt. He wore some fancy medallion that looked like the silver medal for the marathon magic event. He had a big knife in one hand, carried a bag of tools with the other, and was dressed in working clothes. No wonder the water was turned on: someone other than me thought he'd need to clean up tonight. Yeah, he was part of this haunted house. But he was also human, all too human, and that broke my paralysis.

Krebs stopped dead when he spotted the open hole and me. Seemingly, he hadn't expected this. I flung my piece of lamp stand. There wasn't enough distance for a proper javelin toss, but he tried to dodge my improvised spear even so, taking it on a half-turned shoulder. That let me barrel into him, shoving him back through the doorway and into the hall. He hit the wall; I stopped myself on the doorjamb. But he still had a knife, and I'm a track and field man, not a boxer or a fencer. I grabbed the knob and slammed shut the bedroom door. Then I locked it.

"Your lantern," Rich said. He'd drifted to the edge of the hole of horrors. There he billowed outwards, twisting and roiling. My mind heard him chanting in a language that had too many hisses and rasps in the same words.

The door shuddered once but held. I hope Krebs' manly attempt at breaking it down had hurt, a lot. Then I heard floorboards creak as he ran toward the kitchen door, maybe to try the window from outside, maybe to get, ugh, help. But I had plenty of time to scoop up my lit lantern and lob it when Rich gestured, past him, into the hole. I thought the hand of the guy inside stilled as the light arced toward his chest, but maybe that was me imagining things.

The lantern hit. The quicksilver I'd daubed onto it flashed, in an eye-watering, blue-green flare. Mercury vapor and a health hazard, my brain pointlessly registered, before everything seemed to peel apart like some cosmic zipper unjamming.

The form that was Rich puffed away in a flare of gray-green-blue-black. Out in the backyard Krebs screamed, but his scream abruptly muffled and dopplered, dropping volume and pitch as if something had yanked him away at jet speed. Oppressive pressure drew away with him as well, and the air felt clearer. I barely noticed. I'd been thrown back into the wall. As I slid slowly down, scrabbling for purchase, I thought I heard something heavy hit the floor. Then even the dark went out.

 

VI

 

Someone shook me hard. I protested feebly, clinging to the blanket I'd been drooling on.

"No, wake up." Mercedes' voice. Cracking open one bleary eyelid, I gave her the glare she deserved. As I should have known it would, the glare bounced. Instead, she asked, "Do you really know this guy?"

"Guy?" Krebs? I sat up fast on my blankets and opened the other eye: a big mistake. I had to clutch my head to make sure it didn't fall off before I asked, "Who are you talking about?"

"Me." The familiar voice. The best voice.

I turned. The only reason I didn't throw myself at him was that, when I moved, my head did fall off. Okay, it didn't, but it felt like it did. I had to settle for doubling over and groaning. I reeked of scotch, which wasn't helping my stomach any.

"Guy, that's some hangover," Fred said, tone sympathetic, voice much too loud. "Not that I blame you, given what you two found in the back bedroom."

"Some liquid courage was needed to spur on the axe work," Rich said.

"Drinks before, during, and after, I get you."

"No, you have me. Would you let go of my arm now?"

"Hey, sorry. Only making sure you're who you say you are. Dried-up old mummy in chains, complete with extra heads, heh? But I saw Al's face: he knows you."

"Thanks. I do understand your problem with what we found." At last I had both my eyes open and fixed on Rich, so I saw when he shuddered. Even given my poor focus, he seemed strange, and not only because he was alive, and fresh from Fred's armlock. He looked solid. He looked—young, maybe three or five years younger than I did, even. Okay, I guess all the stolen life backed up in the boyfriend had needed an energy sink. Or something. Ow.

Rich said, "I'm not supposed to be here in Los Angeles hanging around with Al, let alone drinking."

Mercedes said to me, "Are you going to try falling over again?"

"Nuh-uh."

"Your friend managed to let us in. He's a little better off than you."

"Good."

"He said he joined the two-person wake for your older friend from whatever-town, and the pair of you got inspired enough to start ripping up the floorboards."

"Uh-huh."

She grimaced. "At least you'd had the sense to find someone to stay with you."

"Uh."

"Are you sure you're awake?"

I looked past her shoulder at the renewed and repaired Rich, gesturing toward the bedroom of doom, sketching out his story with his big, graceful hands. "No. But that's okay." And it was. Feeling rotten kept me focused, good because I didn't want to fall apart. Throwing a fit would not only be awkward but also wrong. The living Rich, currently trying to talk us out of trouble, was well worth these bad nights, even if my nerves didn't agree and probably wouldn't agree for weeks.

Fred and Rich came back over to us. "You should have called the cops right after you found the bodies," Fred told me.

"Yeah," I said. Not a good idea with Rich-the-returned having no identification, let alone proper explanations. Hell, he was wearing the old clothes I'd brought along in case there was a real attic to explore, and they didn't really fit. Good thing I'd never worn them around Fred. "We weren't thinking so well. I'll get over to a neighbor's and telephone. He should bail out first, though." I pointed a thumb at Rich, knowing a nod would be a mistake.

Rich managed a fair imitation of what I recognized as me at eighteen, playing stupid. "I guess I'll have to tell the police about bringing the Scotch. And playing hooky."

Maybe if Fred and Mercedes had been clean-cut sorts from well-groomed neighborhoods, they would have agreed with Rich instead of me. But they were bootstrapping themselves up from places where the cops ran roughshod if they arrived at all. After Rich's comment, Mercedes looked at Fred, and Fred looked at Mercedes. Then she said, "I'll drive, um—" She waved a hand at Rich.

"Richard. Just Rich, these days, now that Mr. Wallace is dead and no one will get confused."

"I'll drive Rich back to the apartment. Fred will stay with you to talk to the police."

"That's great," I said. "Me, I think I'll throw up."

At least with three other living people in the house to help out, I managed to get to the bathroom before I did.

***

It was late that evening before I could say to Rich, "You lie like a rug." I was glad the darkness was falling around my own apartment and not that damned house or even the Pasadena police station. The latter location had seemed my likely lodgings for a while. Good thing they couldn't find Krebs at his home, or office, or anywhere else, a diverting problem by cop standards.

But enough thinking. Rich was talking. "I mostly told your friends the truth, if in a way easy to misinterpret as I intended. It's a skill homosexuality hones."

"Okay, yeah." And we were alone since Fred and Mercedes had gone to share the gossip with their relatives and neighbors. They'd be home tonight and I'd be here with Rich. Fair return for Saturday, although they didn't know that. "You ruined this shirt, though."

"The little Scotch I poured on it will come out. There wasn't that much left after my gargling session. Just enough to give the right – or wrong – impression."

"Richard Whoever, man of action, man of mystery."

"Speaking of which," he said, sounding glum, "I'll have to ask you for quite a lot of the money back, given that I'll need yet another set of false papers."

"Money?" I asked.

"Money," he replied, and his eyebrows lowered. "You're my principal heir. Didn't you get the paperwork from Bryant and Gallagher? It, along with my letter-in-case-of, should have arrived express."

After a moment, I found my voice to say, "Those sons-of-bitches upstairs. No, I didn't. Until the watch came, there was nothing from you. Nothing at all."

His eyes darkened. He reached out and ruffled my hair.

I smiled. "That's going to look weird without the extra years."

Gravely, he punched me in the ribs.

"Ow. Speaking of which, you're not punching out again?"

"I surely wouldn't have chosen such a method to return, but no. I guess I should pay for my extra time by sorting out this mess. I do wonder who raised his remaining son after Whiteside's death. That, I'll look into that right after I chase down a book or two I sold, those few that might be problems rather than pablum or polytheism."

"What about the ones left in the store—" I straightened, alarmed, before I caught up with him and continued, "— which are now packed into the crate in the living room."

"Cash between covers for you, I thought. Otherwise, utter rubbish." He shook his head. "I'm only grateful that my family was impotent in their occult efforts, rather than merely inept like the late Mr. Krebs, even if their impotence did leave me with mistaken opinions about such matters."

"Krebs was a skilled enough murderer. And magician. That thing outside was getting in."

"Yes, but the house should have been more powerful than it was, given how many years and deaths he was into the ritual and how close we were to the midnight of midwinter. You should have been drained deep into slumber when Krebs arrived."

"Midwinter? The solstice, you mean?" I stared at him. Then I remembered his academic background. "Krebs screwed up."

"What do you mean?"

"I can tell you weren't a meteorologist." Shaking my head, I said, "I guess Krebs missed it too, and him without your excuse of disbelieving astrology. Declinational dates drift. This year, winter solstice falls on the twenty-second: tonight. He was rushing finishing his ritual by a day."

Rich considered this before cracking a grin. "I don't know whether to be appalled or reassured that these events follow rules, if bizarre ones."

"I'm glad you'll be figuring them out, not me."

He raised his eyebrows at me, the bastard. "Truly? You don't think the scientific method will apply?"

"Sure it will." I snorted. "If you allow for the confusion created by about a thousand years of research still ahead of humanity before we catch up, not to mention our possibly relevant lack of interdimensional pseudopods and extra eyeballs that see strange spectra."

"Supernatural beings are actually space aliens?" He pursed his lips. "An interesting thesis."

"Oh, no, no drafting me into this. Not until after my Master's. Won't you need a couple of years to reestablish yourself?"

"After I've made sure that this stolen youth of mine doesn't warp me, I will."

"Hey, the guy who had the youth didn't want it anymore." I rushed past considering why I was sure about that statement, past the look that had been in those mad, mad eyes. Nightmares, I knew from experience, would remind me. I didn't need to help. "I don't see what would warp you about being young again. Unless you're taking up hashish this time around."

"Not again, I'm not," he murmured, his own eyes amused.

"Or orgies," I continued.

"Not unaccompanied." His mouth was amused, too.

"Or more Yuletide ghost hunting."

"Not right now." He ruffled my hair again. "This year, I think I'll confine myself to eggnog and madrigals. And Christmas. And you."

I put one hand on each of his – my – shirt lapels and breathed, husky and low, "Great. Do you want to go unwrap your present?"

He looked at me. His shout of laughter, when it came, was almost as joyous as it was amused, which is why I didn't kill him on the spot. "Now, I can't believe you said that!"

"Just for that," I said wrathfully, "you're doing all the work this time."

***

I refused to return the watch the next day even though it had stopped working. It still calmed me down when the memories ambushed me.

Three months later, a match did accidentally fall into some spilled gasoline on the porch of Whiteside's house. None of the neighbors saw a thing.

Six months later, Fred and Mercedes got married. They didn't have to, but I think it was a near miss. Both stayed in school – Fred's mother works, meaning that's how married life should be as far as he's concerned – so they moved into rooms over someone's cousin's garage. I gave Mercedes a toaster and she gave me an embrace that impressed even me. Fred gave me a Dutch rub.

Three days after that, Rich moved in. He needs to save money because he'd started school in the fall at a certain university I know well. His fake transcripts hinted that he'd be a topflight student, although I don't know how he's finessing already knowing Koine Greek. The bongos upstairs stopped after he bought a two-record set of _The Pipes of Three Nations_. I bite sheets and pillows to keep our own noise down. No sense providing the ammunition to retaliate.

We haven't run into more supernatural stuff yet, and I have to say I'm glad. Given my first experience, if hostile spirits were the only drink at the occult bar, I'd go dry for life. Thankfully, horror wasn't the only tipple. This year's holidays I get to celebrate in the best way I know how, with Whisky Dundee, two glasses of eggnog, and my ass in the air as Rich fucks hard and talks sweet. Alive or not, he's the only spirit I need to drive the dead of winter away.

**Author's Note:**

> The setting attempts to be accurate; the metaphysics do not, lucky for us all. However, the occultists of the early twentieth century really were this peculiar in both their behaviors and their beliefs, if only on rare occasions so violent.
> 
> The story was originally published commercially through a small press, but all rights have reverted to me, where they remain. The usual fandom, not-for-profit permissions apply. Given the obvious fannish influences and tropes, it seemed possible to post it here. I hope you enjoy!


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